Animabus
by writergal24
Summary: "Lily Evans used to be a dreamer. Then she met Severus and found that her reality was crazier than anything she could ever dream." With the war underway, Lily is anxious to get out of Hogwarts and start fighting. But only a few months into her seventh year, one night will change all of her plans. AU-ish. James/Lily.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I am not Jo Rowling. Nope. I ain't.**

**_"So I looked up love in the Yellow Pages..."_**

**_-Ed Sheeran, Yellow Pages_**

_Animabus_ - (noun) (Latin) plural of animus; souls

* * *

_Prologue_

Lily sat with her friends on a couch in the Gryffindor Common Room, laughing about something one of their professors had said earlier that day. It was still pretty early – they had just returned from dinner, and the sun was just setting. Miraculously, the third year students found that they didn't have too much homework, so the girls were relaxing.

Then the "Marauders" showed up.

The four boys had just recently started telling everyone to call them by this ridiculous name. They thought it was cool, or something.

Lily liked them all well enough, though. They got on her nerves every once and a while, because they were annoying boys without an ounce of maturity, but they had never done anything that made Lily hate them, really.

As if to demonstrate the lack of maturity that he held, James Potter (one of the "alpha males" of the Marauders, as Lily had heard McGonagall refer to him once) climbed up onto the table in front of the fireplace. He had dark hair, and thick, square glasses. He was slender from the hours he spent playing Quidditch every week, but he was short, shorter than Lily. He was only thirteen, after all.

The girls quieted and looked up at James, ready to see what ridiculous thing they were up to this time.

And then James turned to look directly at Lily. "Lily Evans," he said loudly, drawing the attention of everybody within a ten-foot radius. "There's something I need to ask you."

"Oi?" Lily called back, confused.

"Evans, I think you are extremely fit."

Marlene McKinnon grabbed Lily's arm reassuringly as Lily felt the blood rise to her cheeks. It seemed the whole common room was listening now.

"In fact," James continued, smirking, "I think that we are soul mates. So, I want you to be my girlfriend. Eh, Evans? What do you think?"

There were laughs from some of the older students who sat around them, and Lily stood up and practically stomped over to the table, her red ponytail shaking back and forth as she walked. She roughly pulled James down off of the table. "Is this a joke, Potter? Because it's not funny."

"It's no joke," he laughed. "Every Potter man marries a red-headed lady, and I think you are my red-headed lady."

"No," Lily said, feeling her face flush again.

James raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure? I've been told that I am quite a catch." He winked at her.

"Potter, there is no way… I do not want to go out with you."

"But I was romantic," he protested.

Lily scoffed. "That was not romantic! That was embarrassing!" She took one more look at the boy, and then she pushed past him and ran up the stairs to the girls' dormitory, a place she knew he couldn't follow her to.

For the next month, Lily avoided James at whatever cost, even if it meant spending Potions paired up with a Slytherin whose snide comments about her blood purity (or lack thereof) made her feel extremely uncomfortable. James tried to talk to her, maybe he even wanted to apologize, but she never gave him the chance. Then they went home for Christmas vacation, and when they came back, it seemed that both had decided to forget about the event. Without ever mentioning it again, they went back to being on amiable terms – most of the time, at least.

The difference was that when James annoyed her now, instead of ignoring him as she used to do, Lily had taken to yelling at him, and quite loudly. And he did the same right back at her. Over time, the other Gryffindors learned to avoid the Common Room when they heard James and Lily bickering in the afternoon, because that meant an explosion by nightfall.

And two years later, on a spring afternoon, he would ask her out again, once again in front of all of her friends, all of his friends, and a bunch of strangers. And she would say no and yell at him.

Two more years, and their bloodshot eyes would meet at a party in the dark Common Room.

**Hello, all. I've been meaning to write this story for a while, and I finally got around to it over the summer. I have a completed draft right now, but it needs heavy editing, so I'm not really sure how fast updates are going to be over the next couple months. (But I am done applying to colleges, for those who have seen how slow my updates have been during that time period!)**

**A note about how canon this story is - it's not really. The basis of this story is not canon, but it also does not directly contradict what Jo has given us. That is, it sorta could have happened, but it's pretty obvious that it didn't actually. You can decide whether or not you like that.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**~writergal24**


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

_"I don't wanna waste the weekend / If you don't love me pretend / A few more hours then it's time to go"_

_-Ron Pope, A Drop in the Ocean_

Lily Evans used to be a dreamer. Then she met Severus and found that her reality was crazier than anything she could ever dream.

Lily had not had a single dream the night before. She also had never woken up feeling so alone and confused. She was surprised when she opened her eyes to find that she was lying in her bed in her dormitory, just like she would be on any other morning.

The surprise was instantly replaced by a pounding headache.

Lily groaned loudly.

"Awake, are you?" a voice called from the other side of the room.

"What the bloody hell…" Lily tried to say, but her voice was hoarse. (Her breath also tasted horrifically disgusting.) She pulled her blankets back over her head to hide from the light. Her body was sore and heavy, her muscles tight and exhausted. It was like everything hurt – especially her head.

Lily heard very loud footsteps approaching her bed and then the voice said, "Here, drink this."

Lily peeked back out and laboriously took the flask from Marlene, who was looking at her with a mix of amusement and concern. Lily took a long sip of the potion. It tasted of pineapple and bubble gum. Instantly, she felt some of the color return to her cheeks and her headache began to subside.

"Better?" Marlene asked.

"Loads." Lily pushed some stray locks out of her eyes. "What happened last night?"

It was the first time that Lily had ever asked that question. It was the first time she had ever woken up and not known what she had done the night before. Sure, there had been a couple of times in the past when Lily had gotten a little bit too drunk off of Firewhiskey at a party, but it had never been like this before.

"That's a really good question," Marlene responded, turning on her heel and flouncing back to her bed, her short blonde hair reflecting the sunlight that streamed through the windows.

Lily sat up and took another sip of the potion Marlene had given her. "What do you mean?"

Marlene sat down on her bed and looked at Lily. "You crawled up the staircase at four in the morning, hours after the rest of us had gone to bed. You were giggling like an insane person, and you wouldn't tell us what and possibly who you'd been off doing. I was quite impressed."

Lily thought back, but could remember absolutely none of this. The last thing she really remembered was talking to Remus on the couch about something… but that couldn't have been later than 11. After that – only snippets of laughter, a hand (whose hand?) touching hers, touching her, dark hallways that made her dizzy. "Wait, what do you mean _who_ I'd been off doing?"

Marlene laughed, then stopped when she saw how upset Lily was getting. "Um, maybe you should wait till Elizabeth gets back and ask her." Marlene started fussing with the sheets on her bed.

"Mar, please."

Marlene took a deep breath. "Elizabeth says that the last time she saw you, you were leaving the Common Room."

"With who?" Lily braced herself for the worst possible answer.

"With James," Marlene said softly.

And right there, sitting in her bed, still half-dressed in the clothes she had worn the night before, with a headache that was throbbing, and with Marlene looking slightly afraid, Lily had just gotten the worst possible answer.

* * *

If Lily had had it her way, she would have spent the next week playing the Avoid-James-Potter game. It wouldn't have been the first time that she played the game. She had many times before in fifth year after they had gotten in huge fights and he was getting on her nerves. It wasn't really a fun game because Potter had this way of detecting her from across the castle (Lily suspected he might have a bloodhound hidden in his room), and she hardly ever won. But after confirming with Elizabeth that she had seen Lily and James leaving the common room (and that Elizabeth had only had one drink and wasn't insane), Lily was ready to start playing again.

Unfortunately, there was a new obstacle that hadn't existed in fifth year.

Never had Lily hated Dumbledore so much than the amount she hated him that week for having made James Potter Head Boy.

Lily had been fine when she had first found out that James was her co-Head. She had to admit that he had made a lot of improvement over sixth year, but she was a bit surprised by Dumbledore's decision. The boy probably held some record for the highest number of detentions in a single Hogwarts career. But Lily tried to her best to give him a chance at showing he could be a good Head Boy and set a good example.

He had been pretty good about it so far. He was very good about staying on top of patrols and getting the Prefects to run their patrols. He made it to every meeting, even around Quidditch practices. He still got a couple of detentions (which was probably new for a Head Boy), but he seemed to be doing a pretty good job. Lily didn't even dread the time they spent patrolling every week. When Potter was being rational enough, they were able to have some really interesting conversations, especially given their very different perspectives.

But after "that night," Lily never wanted to look at him again.

He might remember more than she did about what had happened between them – _if_ she really had left the Common Room with him, and _if _they actually stayed out together until four in the morning. He might know what had happened. He might be expecting something from her. He might make fun of her.

Lily was also pretty much ready to never have alcohol again in her life.

But when they set out from the Gryffindor Common Room on Monday night, two nights later, Potter didn't seem to be acting differently at all. He was acting like this was a normal patrol, like nothing had changed between them.

Still, Lily had to make sure. So after they had been walking for a few minutes, she said as casually as possible (though she probably sounding like a person having a panic attack as she said it), "You did a really good job during Saturday's game."

"Oh, thanks. Did you like that last minute goal?" Potter smirked. He was always most smug when talking about his Quidditch skills.

"Yeah, it was okay. It was really O'Ryan's dive for the snitch that stole the game, but I mean…" Lily teased uneasily. "Did you go to the party on Saturday night?"

Potter gave her a strange look. "'Course I did."

"Oh."

"You didn't see me?"

"I-I don't remember," Lily said.

"Wait, you don't remember, or you _don't remember_?" James asked. When Lily's only response was her cheeks turning as pink as the roses Hagrid grew, James smiled. "Whoa, call the Daily Prophet, Evans got so pissed at a party that she can't remember what happened. This is big news."

"Oh, shut it." Lily tried her best to stare straight forward, but she knew her cheeks were turning redder and redder.

Potter laughed, and his laugh echoed through the empty halls. "Relax, Evans, I don't remember that night either."

Lily looked back at him. "You don't?"

Potter shook his head.

"At all?"

"Not really. Why?"

"I just… never mind," Lily said. She pulled open the doors to a cupboard they were passing and was all too relieved to find a couple of fourth-years sticking their tongues down each other's throats.

**I originally was only going to post the first half of this as chapter one, but then I changed my mind and I'm not sure about it... I don't know.**

**Any predictions/thoughts/criticism/lovely thoughts?**

**~writergal24**


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